


What I Really Want to Say, I Can’t Define

by TateTheSmolBlondeBoi



Series: When You Grab a Hold of Me, Tell Me I’ll Never be Set Free [1]
Category: Hotline Miami (Video Games)
Genre: Beard (Hotline Miami) - Freeform, Beard loves him, Cigarettes, Couch Cuddles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Support, Emotions, Eventual Smut, First Dates, Fluff, Jacket (Hotline Miami) - Freeform, Jacket is touch starved, Jacket/Beard, M/M, Mentions of Jacket's Work, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Phone Calls, Pizza, Possible Sexual Content in Future, Voicemails, Will be more chapters, beard, jacket, just saying..., kinda gay, mental health
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:40:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23715316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TateTheSmolBlondeBoi/pseuds/TateTheSmolBlondeBoi
Summary: When someone lives a life on the edge, it is their vices that allow them to unravel even when they cannot afford to themselves. Jacket loses his vice, the one that kept his sanity through the events of his actions and his violent tendencies, proving to do him more harm than good. He begins to be more careless and sloppy with his actions, causing wounds and his mental state to show through the front he was giving off. Beard begins to find those cracks in his personalities, trying to figure out Jacket's pieces and why he was in the state he was in. In a chance to further this discover he offered his number to Jacket and asked if he would use it once and awhile to let him know he was alright. He never thought it would work but Jacket called him a week later and attempted a conversation. He wasn't a person for talking, Jacket would listen and watch, but not give personal meaning verbally, but what he gave Beard allowed him a chance to confess some of his anxieties. And with each confession Beard offered a solution, leading to may visits to Jacket's apartment to comfort the man from what burdens him. And with each visit Jacket got closer and closer, letting Beard be enlightened by his being not only verbally, but physically.
Relationships: Beard/Jacket (Hotline Miami)
Series: When You Grab a Hold of Me, Tell Me I’ll Never be Set Free [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708054
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	What I Really Want to Say, I Can’t Define

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a AU sort of, I wrote this acknowledging that Beard work at the VHS as shown in the game, but instead of it being an illusion, I made it reality and mentioned that the only things Don Juan, Richard, and Rasmus held in the real world were his anxieties, guilt, and memories he cannot feel or remember.
> 
> I always enjoyed their relationship so I thought I might indulge in some ideas with it, allowing Jacket to have some comforts after his break-up mentioned in the phone call between him and Beard had. I might go into more development about Don Juan, Richard, and Rasmus in future chapters and talk about them as developing mental illness and show how the contribute to how I am playing the plot out. I would like to make things a lot steamer next chapter which I will finish soon.
> 
> Please comment and give ideas or input if you would like to! Come find me on my Tumblr: Milesthebrokenboy

There were visions of colors and sounds. Ones that Jacket could no longer place in his own head, ones of screaming and scarlet and ones of comfort he could no longer see but feel instead. He missed those sensations the most. He could feel. But the stimulus was dulled considering the desensitization of the hand dealt to him. Feelings of nausea and paranoia were common. But those of warmth, of hands that held onto body heat unlike his did. The feelings of a body next to him in his sleep. Those were things he could not live without. Not with everything going on around him. Too much stimulus and nothing to ground him. No hands or words. Just confusion and fear. He can remember when it started. 

When she left him the first time. His first girl. The one that warmed his back as she held him into her, as if to protect him from the things in his head. The one who would strip him down bare only covered in blood and shame and drag him to shower off and eat something for the night. The one who he relied on more than the adrenaline. Who left him cold and alone with an empty bed beside his own. The stripped blue mattress that only filled the room with more emptiness than there actually was. 

He often slept on his couch than in that room to avoid said feeling. The room may be empty of those besides himself, but the emotions and stains that drenched the walls and floors now stayed behind like a blood stain on a white shirt. Which was the best metaphor Jacket could give Beard as he spoke about her leaving on the phone in his hand. 

Jacket would wind the curly phone cord in between his fingers as the other ginger man spoke to him. Beard was a vice he had. His words floated in his head when he was alone at night. It was his outside connection to the world that held him to reality and at times he wouldn't even pick up the phone to respond to the man, but the man would know he was there and leave long-winded voicemails to fill the room with his warm tone and vocabulary. As if he were there with him. Jacket would snicker at the man’s jokes even though he knew he could not hear his response, knowing that Beard knew that Jacket’s ears were his and no one else's for the time they had. 

‘’Jacket? Jacket you still there? Did I lose you?’’ Beard repeated into the speaker as it finally reached Jacket’s head that he had lost himself in his words instead of their meanings. 

‘’I’m here. Sorry. I was zoned out for a moment. Thank you for talking to me. Thank you. Now what were you saying?’’ Beard smiled on the other side of the line. Jacket's voice was soft and vulnerable. He loved talking to the man knowing what it did for him. He knew that he and the packs of cigarettes that filled Jacket’s apartment kept him alive. 

‘’No need to thank me, kid. It’s on the house. You would’ve done the same for me right?’’ Beard spoke smoothly allowing his smile to appear in his voice. Jacket made a small noise of understanding nodding against the phone trying to strike his lighter to light a cigarette in between his dry lips. ‘’I would try. I am no good at words, you can fill a room with warmth, with-with feeling, emotion, I can no longer look people in their eyes, little less speak to them in normalcy.’’ Jacket was getting shaky with his tone as with his hands, hoping that a rush was all he needed to make his body stop quivering in a mixture of withdrawal and anxiety. 

'‘Is that a compliment? From the man himself, huh? Why thank you. I could teach you, you know. Teach you how to tolerate people, speak to them. People like verbal connection. It just takes practice. Like how you talk with me.’’ Beard was offering a chance to the man knowing that he might not take it, like how he had promised to send him a copy of the Polaroid of him and Jacket that he would most likely never see in the daylight. Jacket was bad at promises. That was something else he could most likely teach him in the processes of all things. 

‘’You are good at talking with me. I can tell when you mean things and when you are lying through your teeth. People carry emotion in their words, you do too, it is just harder to find yours sometimes. It takes awhile for people to understand your speech patterns. That goes for everyone, you know, even with me.’’ Beard was at the VHS store sitting at the counter tracing his finger over his desk out of boredom, considering that it had been a slow afternoon for him. ‘’I can teach you how to talk to people and mean it. Make your words worth the time they take, I know you are careful about what you say. You have more self control than most…’’ Jacket gave a small chuckle as Beard kept speaking to him. ‘’If you want I’ll come over with some pizza and we can go over some things, get some practice in ya.’’ He looked out the front window of the store biting at his lips in anticipation of Jacket’s words wanting to see his friend, wanting to make sure of his well being. 

‘’You don’t have to you know… I have dinner here, I will be alright for the night.” Jacket’s words trailed off in his sentences, proving to Beard he needed to be there for him. ‘’That so? What are you eating then? What is in that empty fridge of yours?’’ Jacket bit the inside of his cheek and mumbled something under his breath, something alongside a curse and a confession. ‘’What was that? Having ‘fuck’ for dinner?’’ Jacket knew he had been exposed, in which he responded in a defensive tone. ‘’I said spaghetti. Actually, asshole.’’ He sounded confident in his words, but as Beard spoke his confidence began to dwindle. ‘’I bet you did, how about I order some pizza and I will be over about six or so? I will close up a little early considering the slow night and come over. How does that sound kiddo?’’ 

‘’You don’t have to. I will be fine. I promise.’’ His tone became more intent in an attempt to ward Beard off from his state. A textbook example of Jacket and his hollow promises, to which Beard wanted to use against him to prove that he can be honest with him instead of hiding away in that apartment of his craving personal contact with anything other than a pillow and a Nintendo controller. He would never admit it verbally, but the times Beard did come over, after many reassurances of him not going through any trouble to do so, Jacket would sit himself in his lap and unravel himself from whatever coated him in such intense stresses. 

At times they would talk for hours when he did this, or at least Beard would until he would look down upon the man in his embrace to find his eyes had closed and his hands tangled in Beard’s shirt, holding onto him, subtly wanting him to stay with him like this for however long he would let him. During those times he would appear in the messy apartment to find Jacket sleeping on his couch or in front of the television screen in his room playing on his Nintendo with intensity, to which he would set his things down on Jacket’s dining room table and say hello to the introverted man. He was always greeted by Jacket’s bright smile, one that only a handful have been blessed with, to which he knew he was always welcome in the man’s presence. 

He knew now that if he wanted to invite himself in this is how he would do it. Jacket knew there was no way to tell Beard no in these circumstances, knowing he would give off more than he should about his wellness or his sanity. Beard’s lips pushed themselves into a flat line leaving silence as Jacket knew he was almost being scolded like someone would a kid, having been caught in a lie. A sigh could be heard from Jacket over the line having given in to Beard’s offer. ‘’Okay. That-That sounds nice. I would like that-that.’’ Jacket almost threw the phone away from himself knowing his personality was slipping through the cracks of his persona. And Beard was no stranger to this rare event, knowing how to pick at Jacket’s edges and weakness causing him to cave in and let Beard take care of him. To which Beard loved to do.

‘’Great! I’ll be over at six. Don’t fall asleep on me till I get there alright?’’ He chuckled to himself knowing that the joke would make Jacket pick at his Letterman's sleeves in embarrassment remembering being held by the ginger man. Beard knew he was a hard case to crack, but he also knew that he was also human. Meaning that his emotions and personality had to be somewhere, even if it was lost in the chaos of all things, he could find it if no one else could. Beard was good at those sorts of things. That is why Jacket liked him. Because no matter how lost he got within himself, within his past, Beard was always there to remind him he was still made of flesh and blood. And that he was there to love him regardless, regardless of what he did. 

‘’I won’t. Come soon okay? Thanks. Drive safe.’’ Jacket said this with a slight blush on his face pushing away these warm sensations building up in his chest, he took the last drag from his cigarette and set the bud of it in the ashtray on the table beside him. The nicotine high would have to do for now considering he would have to make himself look decent for Beard. He never had anyone else over besides him so there was no need to do so otherwise, but he had a few nice graphic tees he enjoyed that were clean and fresh that did the trick. Not formal, but comfortable, and that is all he wanted to be with the man. 

Jacket knew that looking nice would not only serve the part of convincing Beard of his sanity. He had to figure out how rearrange his apartment to not look like he ate out of pizza boxes and washed weapons of homicides in his bathroom sink as well. Jacket looked over at the analog clock sitting next to him flashing the time, 5:16. He was working thoughts in his head as he stared at the numbers, trying to figure out how to remove the pizza boxes and newspapers from his place before Beard would come to find them and ask things he shouldn’t from him. He knew about the things he did, but it was best not to serve a reminder. 

‘’Alright I will! See you soon, Bye!’’ Beard’s words had blown past him like bullets, but the phone’s now empty dial tone brought him back to the present. Jacket placed the phone receiver back in it’s stand and took a deep breath. ‘’Forty four minutes.’’ He mumbled to himself getting up from his tan couch, hearing his bones crack and pop as he had not moved from that cushion at all that day. 

Looking at the scattered mess that he shared his apartment with he began to find a place for things to be set and hidden for the time as to not scare the man coming to him. Creating hidden compartments in his dwelling to cover the things that could be bagged as evidence if given context to their meanings. He did not want to have to hide his things, it was like hiding a part of himself, almost like being ashamed of the violence he had caused. Wishing for something besides those incidents, a life he could live and be happy with, not hide under his bed or in his closet. But he had to make a choice, which was not chosen by him but by the things that burden him. The things he can no longer remember or feel. The things that sit in chairs and watch, waiting, teaching him the things around him are not what they seem. He wasn’t right in the head, he knew this, but those animals in his head were nothing to him in life, but his guilt and memories. 

He finished this mundane task of anxiety to find nineteen minutes had gone by, his apartment looked better than before considering the floor was cleared of the tracked homicide news and the fact that weapons were no longer sitting in his sink to be cleaned. He slowly moved to the kitchen next to relocate empty, greased soaked pizza next to his trash can. By finishing this last piece he looked around at the area he had cleaned and moved, it seemed livable, a good enough lie to show Beard so he did not see anything he shouldn’t. Jacket was happy with this and moved back to the couch looking at the bright red numbers on the clock once more. ‘’Ten minutes.’’ he spoke out as he laid himself onto the couch to wait the rest of the time until Beard would be there to show up to their ‘’date’’. 

The man meant more to him than he could find words to explain, but maybe this lesson of speech would teach him the words he needed to know to define it. He had to find them eventually, and maybe this was his chance, to say the things he wanted to mumble against the man’s neck. To tell him the things he did in his dreams. Ones of comfort and meaning, ones that would make him need Jacket, ones that would make him stay. The ones that would let him stay forever, not just the lack of them when Jacket didn’t have the energy to argue with the man’s requests to see him. But Jacket could not think about those things now because the knock at his door told him he had no time to do so. Beard was at his doorstep downstairs. 


End file.
